With Government support, at Central and State levels, CSCs can be very effective for delivery of services to citizens, especially in the countryside
Common service centres (CSCs) are digital access points under the Digital India initiative of the government of India. CSCs are social enterprises with basic computing infrastructure, which are operated and managed by a local entrepreneur. These entrepreneurs support the community in availing various government and non-Government services.
Government, both at the Central and state levels, has utilised the CSC network for extending various citizen-centric services and also support in implementation of government programmes and schemes to citizens close to their places of residence.
How effective is the CSC model for delivery of various services to citizen especially in rural India? Attempt has been made to evaluate this for selected Central government flagship programmes. One of the government initiatives has been enabling every citizen to get an Aadhar number. CSCs across the country have supported in enrollment of about 20 crore citizens for Aadhar, which is about 16 per cent of the total Aadhar generated in the country. This of course cannot be considered as major achievement. This is mainly due to the fact that all CSCs were not permitted to do Aadhar registration by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).
Even today only about 15,000 of the total 5.12 CSCs are allowed to undertake Aadhar updating. Despite this, the CSC network is the highest Aadhar enrolment agency in the country. Thus the low contribution in the Aadhaar registration and updating is due to the regulatory forbearance, not because of CSCs’ inability.
Another major government initiative is financial inclusion. CSCs are working as business correspondents (BCs) of banks and also promoting the Aadhar enabled payment system (AEPS). All the 5 lakh plus CSCs are delivering the basic financial services to citizens. During 2021-22, CSCs enabled AEPS transaction for an amount of more than Rs 15,000 crore; through 55,000 BCs, the bank transaction amount was Rs 45,000 crore. A total of about 22 crore transaction took place in 2021-22 through BCs and AEPS services.
CSCs are also helping citizen avail loan products from banks. About 2 million loan leads have been generated during one year through CSCs across the country. CSCs have also helped citizens avail life and non-life insurance products. During the last year, 16 lakh non-life insurance products were sold to citizens through CSCs.
Similarly, CSCs are the largest enrollment agency for the National Pension Scheme of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA). They have enrolled more than 45 lakh labourers under the Prime Minister Shramyogi Mandhaan Yojna.
CSCs have helped in extending the other Government pension schemes.
Promoting a digitally empowered and inclusive society is another mandate of the Government. CSCs have supported the government in extending digital literacy to citizens in rural India. Under the Prime Minister Grameen Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA) more than 45 million rural people have been provided basic digital literacy; over 50 per cent of these are women. The impact of digital literacy is also reflected in the significant increase in internet usage in rural India in recent years—about 68 crore broadband users.
The Government’s intention is also to make all its services delivered to citizens close to the place of their residence. Beside enabling individuals to avail such services themselves (the Umang APP ), these are also delivered through an assisted mode, CSCs, especially to support those who are unable to avail the same directly. The Digital Sewa platform supports Government in enabling access to such services through CSCs.
However, only 15 state government (e-district) services are integrated and thus available to the people in rural areas. In many states, a large number of services are still to be enabled for delivery though CSCs. The total number of G2C services transaction through CSCs during the last year was 10.9 crore (all transactions through the Digital Sewa portal) as compared to 1.06 crore in 2014. Non-G2C service transactions during 2021 were 27.2 crore. Thus CSCs are not playing a very significant role in extending all G2C services, especially of State Governments. Uttar Pradesh (30 per cent), Bihar (10 per cent) and Maharashtra (11 per cent) alone contribute more than 50 per cent of the total G2C services delivered through CSCs to villagers. Thus the delivery of G2C services through CSCs to citizen depends on the state government’s support to integrate such services with the Digital Sewa portal and CSCs are still to play a significant role in enabling access to all G2C services to citizen across
the country.
This requires integration of all the existing Government services both at the Central and state levels.
The Government is also committed to improve the quality of life of farmers. CSCs have supported government in extension of the Fasal Bima Scheme. About 70 per cent of the non-loanee farmers in the country are extended the Fasal Bima Scheme through the CSCs. Similarly, CSCs have supported the extension of soil health cards (5 crore) and PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojna (3.76 crore farmers).
CSCs have also promoted more than 3,000 farmer producer organisations (FPOs). Twelve 12 lakh farmers have availed the advisory from experts through the CSC tele-consultation platform. CSCs have supported farmers in the sale of their produce but in a very limited way.
Ayushman Bharat is an important scheme of Government, providing Rs 5-lakh health insurance to poor families. Over 50 per cent (or 7 crore) persons have been supported by CSCs by way of registration for Ayushman Bharat. Telemedicine services of CSCs also have a limited success as the acceptability of such services in rural India takes a long time.
The Government has also been committed to extend good quality internet to rural India through Bharat Net (optical fibre). CSCs are associated in the last-mile operation of the Bharat Net.
Labour welfare continues to be an important agenda for the government. The registration of unorganised labour through E-shram has been supported by CSCs across the country. Around 16 crore unorganised labourers have been so far registered by CSCs under E-Shram which is more than 50 per cent of the total registration.
CSCs have to play a significant role in the extension of healthcare services to citizens, owing to the limited success of telemedicine in rural areas. CSCs have emerged as an effective channel for the conduct of survey (economic census of 40 crore household/establishment), advocacy of Government schemes/ programmes, and support in registration of identified beneficiaries within a defined time frame.
Thus, so far the effectiveness of CSCs for support to rural citizens has been partial. With government support, both at the Central and state levels, however, CSCs can be very effective for the delivery of services to citizen, especially in the countryside. Local entrepreneurs (more than one lakh of them being women), driven by incentives and possessing the desired skill to manage and operate the computing infrastructure, can be a game changer. They help build sustainable social enterprises and a model for other developing countries.
(The writer is a 1978 batch IAS officer, is Managing Director, Common Services Centre (CSC) e-Governance Services, Ministry of Information Technology. The views expressed are personal.)
